Customer Factor is great but not perfect. The look and feel of it is a little behind the times and updates are fairly slow to release but otherwise it does pretty much everything you need.

If I could change things, the scheduling and the job tracking would be first on the list. Since we do high rise and much larger projects, the calendar lay out is just very difficult to read at a glance. We used clockshark for a while for scheduling and the layout was amazing. The app sucked but the calendar was great. drag and drop scheduling, easy assigning to employees, and easy to read at a glance views.

Job tracking on larger, multi-day projects is difficult right now too. Essentially there’s no easy way to add notes on what was completed each day. So we’re doing it with pen and paper and that’s messy. If there was a feature to have the employees add a note into the system before being able to clock out (preferably a form to fill out) it would make life so much easier.

On that note, clocking in and out has always been an issue. Automatic reminders from the system would be amazing.

Service Auto Pilot has a ton of features and customizability but it has a steep learning curve and is also (or was when we used it) pretty out dated in the look and feel.

Would love to discuss more if you care to PM. I’ve been looking for the perfect software for years.

I get asked a lot about software with the WCRA/PWRA membership since we offer many software discounts so I can share my thoughts on the subject.

Software isn’t a one size fits all thing. A lot of these software companies offer free trials or demos. Try some out! You really have to play around with it to see what you like and which features are important to you.

My number one frustration right now with HouseCall is it’s herky-jerky workflow (especially on the desktop UI). Not very intuitive at all. My wife is trying to take over the office management this year, and she’s getting so frustrated trying to use HCP, that she’s contemplating going completely old-school - paper customer files and everything

I love a bunch of the features of HCP, but it’s just lacking in some basic common sense items. Here’s a thread on PWR about it:

My biggest pain points have been: no offline support, at all no alerts for when an email is rejected no real support for taking deposit payments Other features I’d really like to see: iPad app ACH/ electronic check payments (edit: just found out...

the difficulty lies in that there are no real standards beyond the basics of what should be in a window cleaning CRM and what it should do (think dentist office software, lots of standards regarding scheduling, reminding, billing etc)

I was able to build my database and invoicing in MS access years ago, but the things I can datamine (because I capture the info to begin with) and change on the fly I could not find anywhere else, on the flipside MS access is outdated and Im missing on some new features

its always going to be about tradeoffs for sure in this industry unfortunately